"Well, I have sent in my resignation, and I am free. But I am a little afraid about you. You have been used to every luxury—and the carriage—and all that."
"One of my ambitions is to drive in a hansom cab. Another is to have a latch-key. Both will soon be gratified. I am only sorry for one thing."
"What is that, dear?"
"That we can't be Rosalind and Celia; that I can't put on man's clothes and liberty."
"But you don't like men—you always want to avoid them."
Miss Grey said nothing in defence of her own consistency. She was thinking that if she had been a man, she would have been spared the vexation of having to listen to Mr. Augustus Sheppard's proposals.
"I suspect," Miss Blanchet said, "that people will say we are more like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza."
"Which of us is the Sancho?"
"Oh, I of course; I am the faithful follower."
"You—poor little poetess, full of dreams, and hopes, and unselfishness! Why, I shall have to see that you get something to eat at tolerably regular intervals."
"How happy we shall be! And I shall be able to complete my poem! Do you know, Minola," she said confidentially, "I do believe I shall be able to make a career in London. I do indeed! The miserable details of daily life here pressed me down, down," and she pressed her own hand upon her forehead to illustrate the idea. "There, in freedom and quiet, I do think I shall be able to prove to the world that I am worth a hearing!"
This was a tender subject with Miss Grey. She could not bear to disturb by a word the harmless illusion of her friend, and yet the almost fierce truthfulness of her nature would not allow her to murmur a sentence of unmeaning flattery.
"One word, Mary," she said; "if you grow famous, no marrying—mind!"
Little Miss Blanchet laughed and then grew sad, and cast her eyes down.
"Who would ask me to marry, my dearest? And even if they did, the buried past would come out of the grave—and——"
She slightly raised both hands in deprecation of this mournful resurrection.
"Well, I have all to go through with my people yet."
"They won't prevent you?" Miss Blanchet asked anxiously.
"They can't. In a few months I should be my own mistress; and what is the use of waiting? Besides, they don't really care—except for the sake of showing authority and proving to girls that they ought to be contented slaves. They know now that I am no slave. I do believe my esteemed step-father—or step-stepfather, if there is such a word—would consent to emancipate me if he could do so with the proper ceremonial—the slap on the cheek."
The allusion was lost on Miss Blanchet.
"Mr. Saulsbury is a stern man indeed," she said, "but very good; that we must admit."
"All good men, it seems, are hard, and all soft men are bad."
"What of Mr. Augustus Sheppard?" Miss Blanchet asked softly. "How will he take your going away?"
"I have not asked him, Mary. But I can tell you if you care to know. He will take it with perfect composure. He has about as much capacity for foolish affection as your hearth-broom there."
"I think you are mistaken, Minola—I do indeed. I think that man is really——"
"Well. Is really what?"
"You won't be angry if I say it?"
Minola seemed as if she were going to be angry, but she looked into the little poetess's kindly, wistful eyes, and broke into a laugh.
"I couldn't be angry with you, Mary, if I had ten times my capacity for anger—and that would be a goodly quantity! Well, what is Mr. Sheppard really, as you were going to say?"
"Really in love with you, dear."
"You kind and believing little poetess—full of faith in simple true love and all the rest of it! Mr. Sheppard likes what he considers a respectable connection in Keeton. Failing in one chance he will find another, and there is an end of that."
"I don't think so," Miss Blanchet said gravely. "Well, we shall see."
"We shall not see him any more. We shall live a glorious, lonely, independent life. I shall study humanity from some lofty garret window among the stars. London shall be my bark and my bride, as the old songs about the Rovers used to say. All the weaknesses of humanity shall reveal themselves to me in the people next door to us and over the way. I'll study in the British Museum! I'll spend hours in the National Gallery! I'll lie under the trees in Epping Forest! IthinkI'll go to the gallery of a theatre!Liberté, liberté, cherie!" And Miss Greyproceeded to chant from the "Marseillaise" with splendid energy as she walked up and down the room with clasped hands of mock heroic passion.
"You said something about a man and a brother just now, dear," Miss Blanchet gently interposed. "I have something to tell you about a man and a brother.Mybrother is back again in London."
Miss Blanchet made this communication in the tone of one who is trying to seem as if it would be welcome.
"Your brother? He has come back?" Miss Grey did not like to add, "I am so sorry," but that was exactly what she would have said if she had spoken her mind.
"Yes, my dear—quite reformed and as steady as can be, and going to make a great name in London. Oh, you may trust him to this time—you may indeed."
Miss Grey's handsome and only too expressive features showed signs of profound dissatisfaction.
"I couldn't help telling him that we were going to live in London—one's brother, you know."
"Yes, one's brother," Miss Grey said with sarcastic emphasis. "They are an affectionate race, these brothers! Then he knows all about our expedition? Has he been here, Mary?"
"Oh, no, dear; but he wrote to me—such beautiful letters! Perhaps you would like to read them?"
Miss Grey was silent, and was evidently fighting some battle with herself. At last she said:
"Well, Mary dear, it can't be helped, and I dare say he won't trouble to come very often to seeus. But I hope he will come as often as you like, for you might be terribly lonely. I don't care to know anybody. I mean to study human nature, not to know people."
"But you have some friends in London, and you are going to see them."
"Oh—Lucy Money; yes. She was at school with us, and we used to be fond of each other. I think of calling to see her, but she may be changed ever so much, and perhaps we shan't get on together at all. Her father has become a sort of great man in London, I believe—I don't know how. They won't trouble us much, I dare say."
The friends then sat and talked for a short time about their project. It is curious to observe that though they were such devoted friends they looked on their joint purpose with very different eyes. The young woman, with her beauty, her spirit, and her talents, was absolutely sincere and single-minded, and was going to London with the sole purpose of living a free, secluded life, without ambition, without thought of any manner of success. The poor little old maid had her head already filled with wild dreams of fame to be found in London, of a distinguished brother, a bright career, publishers seeking for everything she wrote, and her name often in the papers. Devoted as she was to Miss Grey, or perhaps because she was so devoted to her, she had already been forming vague but delightful hopes about the reformed brother which she would not now for all the world have ventured to hint to her friend.
Late that same night a young man stepped from a window in one of the rooms on the third floor in the Hôtel du Louvre in Paris, and stood in the balcony. It was a balcony in that side of the hotel which looks on the Rue de Rivoli. The young man smoked a cigar and leaned over the balcony.
It was a soft moonlight night. The hour was late and the streets were nearly silent. The latest omnibus had gone its way, and only now and then a rare and lingeringvoitureclicked and clattered along, to disappear round the corner of the place in front of the Palais Royal. The long line of gas lamps, looking a faint yellow beneath the hotel and the Louvre Palace across the way, seemed to deepen and deepen into redder sparks the further the eyefollowed them to the right as they stretched on to the Place de la Concorde and the Champs Elysées. To the left the young man, leaning from the balcony, could see the tower of St. Jacques standing darkly out against the faint, pale blue of the moonlighted sky. The street was a line of silver or snow in the moonlight.
The young man was tall, thin, dark, and handsome. He was unmistakably English, although he had an excitable and nervous way about him which did not savor of British coolness and composure. He seemed a person not to take anything easily. Even the moonlight, and the solitude, and the indescribably soothing and philosophic influence of the contemplation of a silent city from the serene heights of a balcony, did not prevail to take him out of himself into the upper ether of mental repose. He pulled his long moustaches now and then, until they met like a kind of strap beneath his chin, and again he twisted their ends up as if he desired to appear fierce as a champion duellist of the Bonapartist group. He sometimes took his cigar from his lips and held it between his fingers until it went out, and when he put it into his mouth again he took several long puffs before he quite realized the fact that he was puffing at what one might term dry stubble. Then he pulled out a box of fusees and lighted his cigar in an irritated way, as if he were protesting that really the fates were bearing down upon him rather too heavily, and that he was entitled to complain at last.
"Good evening, sir," said a strong, full British voice that sounded just at his elbow.
The young man, looking round, saw that his next-door neighbor in the hotel had likewise opened his window and stepped out on his balcony. The two had met before, or at least seen each other before, once or twice. The young man had seen the elder with some ladies at breakfast in the hotel, and that evening he and his neighbor had taken coffee side by side on the boulevards and smoked and exchanged a few words.
The elder man's strong, rather under-sized figure showed very clearly in the moonlight. He had thick, almost shaggy hair, of an indefinable dark brownish color—hair that was not curly, that was not straight, that did not stand up, and yet could evidently never be kept down. He had a rough complexioned face, with heavy eyebrows and stubby British whiskers. His hands were large and reddish-brown and coarse. He was dressed carelessly—that is, his clothes were evidently garments that had cost money, but he did not seem to care how he wore them. Any garment must fall readily into shapelessness and give up trying to fit well on that unheeding figure. The Briton did not seem exactly what one would at once assume to be a gentleman. Yet he was not vulgar, and he was evidently quite at his ease with himself. He looked somehow like a man who had money or power of some kind, and who did not care whether people knew it or did not know it. Our younger Briton had at the first glance taken him for the ordinary English father of a family, travelling with his womankind. But he had not seen him for two minutes at the breakfast table before he observed that the supposed heavy father was never in a fuss, had a way of having all his orders obeyed without trouble or misunderstanding, and for all his strong British accent talked French with entire ease and a sort of resolute grammatical accuracy.
"Staying in Paris?" the elder man said—he too was smoking—when the younger had replied to his salutation.
"No; I am going home—I mean I am going to England—to-morrow."
"Ay, ay? I almost wish I were too. I'm taking my wife and daughters for a holiday. I don't much care for holidays myself. I hadn't time for enjoyment of such things when I could enjoy them, and of course when you get out of the way of enjoying yourselfyou never get into it again; it's a sort of groove, I suppose. Anyhow, we don't ever enjoy much, our people. You are English, I suppose?"
"Yes, I am English."
"Wish you weren't? I see."
Indeed, the tone in which the young man answered the question seemed to warrant this interpretation.
"Excuse me; I didn't say that," the young man said, a little sharply.
"No, no; I only thought you meant it. We are not bound, you know, to keep rattling up the Rule Britannia always among ourselves."
"I can assure you I am not at all inclined to rattle the Rule Britannia too loudly," the young man said, tossing the end of his cigar away and looking determinedly into the street with his hands dug deeply into his pockets.
The elder man smoked for a few seconds in silence, and looked up and down the long straight line of street.
"Odd," he said abruptly. "I always think of Balzac when I look into the streets of Paris, and when I give myself time to think. Balzac sums up Paris to me."
"Yes," said the younger man, talking for the first time with an appearance of genuine interest in the conversation; "but things must be greatly changed since that time even in Paris, you know."
"Changed? Not a bit of it. The outsides of course. The Louvre was half a ruin the other day, and now it's getting all right again. That's change, if you like to call it so. But the heart of things is just the same. Balzac stands for Paris, believe you me."
"I don't believe a word of it—not a word! I mean—excuse me—that I don't agree with you."
"Yes, yes: I understand what you mean. I'm not offended. Well?"
"Well—I don't believe a bit that men and women ever were like that. You mean to tell me that people were made without hearts in Paris or anywhere else? Do you believe in a place peopled by cads and sneaks and curs—and the women half again as bad as the men?"
The young man grew warm, and the elder drew him out, and they discussed Balzac as they stood in the balcony and looked down on silent moonlighted Paris. The elder man smoked and smiled and shrugged his shoulders good-humoredly. The younger was as full of gesture and animation as if his life depended on the controversy.
"All right," the elder said at last. "I like to hear you talk, but Paris is Balzac to me still. Going to be in London some time?"
"I suppose so: yes," in a tone of sudden depression and discontent.
"I wish we might meet. I live in London, and I wish you would come and see me when we get back from our—holiday we'll call it."
The young man turned half away and leaned on the balcony as if he were looking very earnestly for something in the direction of the Champs Elysées. Then he faced his companion suddenly and said,
"I think you had much better not have anything to do with me: I should only prove a bore to you, or to anybody."
"How is that?"
"Well—in short, I'm a man with a grievance."
"Ay, ay? What's your grievance? Whom has it to do with?"
The young man looked up quickly, as if he did not quite understand the brusque ways of his new acquaintance, who put his questions so directly. But the new acquaintance seemed good-humored and quite at his ease, and evidently had not the least idea of being rude or over-inquisitive. He had only the way of one apparently used to ordering people about.
"My grievance is against the Government," the young man said with a grave politeness, almost like self-assertion.
"Government here: in France?"
"No, no: our own Government."
"Ay, ay? What have they been doing?Youhaven't invented anything—new cannon—flying machine—that sort of thing?"
"No: nothing of the kind—I wish I had—but how did you know?"
"How did I know what?"
"That I hadn't invented anything?"
"Why, I knew it by looking at you. Do you think I shouldn't know an inventor? You might as well ask me how I know a man has been in the army. Well, about this grievance of yours?"
"I dare say you will know my name," the young man said with a sort of reluctant modesty, which contrasted a little oddly with the quick movements and rapid talk which usually belonged to him. Then his manner suddenly changed, and he spoke in a tone of something like irritation, as if he had better have the whole thing out at once and be done with it—"My name is Heron—Victor Heron."
"Heron—Heron?" said the other, turning over the name in his memory. "Well, I don't know I'm sure—I may have heard it—one hears all sorts of names. But I don't remember just at the moment."
Mr. Heron seemed a little surprised that his revelation had produced no effect. He had made up his mind somehow that his new friend was mixed up with politics and public affairs.
"You'll remember Victor Heron of the St. Xavier's Settlements?" he said decisively.
"Heron of the St. Xavier's Settlements? Ah, yes, yes. To be sure. Yes, I begin to remember now. Of course, of course. You're the fellow who got us into the row with the Portuguese or the Dutch, or who was it? About the slave trade, or something? I remember it in the House."
"I am the fool," Mr. Heron went on volubly—"the blockhead, the idiot, that thought England had principles, and honor, and a policy, and all the rest of it! I haven't lived in England very much. I'm the son of a colonist—the Herons are an old colonial family—and you can't think, you people always in England, how romantic and enthusiastic we get about England, we silly colonists, with our old-fashioned ways. When I got that confounded appointment—it was given in return for some old services of my father's—I believe I thought I was going to be another sort of Raleigh, or something of the kind."
"Just so; and of course you were ready to tumble into any sort of scrape. You are hauled over the coals—snubbed for your pains?"
"Yes—I was snubbed."
"Of course: they'll soon work the enthusiasm out of you. But that's a couple of years ago—and you weren't recalled?"
"No. I wasn't recalled."
"Well, what's your grievance then?"
"Why—don't you see?—my time is out—and they've dropped me down. My whole career is closed—I'm quietly thrown over—and I'm only twenty-nine!" The young man caught at his moustache with nervous hands and kicked with one foot against the rails of the balcony. He gazed into the street, and his eyes sparkled and twinkled as if there were tears in them. Perhaps there were, for Mr. Heron was evidently a young man of quicker emotions than young men generally show in our days. He made haste to say something, apparently as if to escape from himself.
"I am leaving Paris in the morning."
"Then why don't you go to bed and have a sleep?"
"Well, I don't feel like sleeping just yet."
"You young fellows never know the blessing of sleep. I can sleep whenever I want to—it's a great thing. I make it a rule though to do all my sleeping at night, whenever I can. You leave Paris in the morning? Now that's a thing I don't like to do. Paris should never be seen early in the morning. London shows to the best advantage early; but Paris—no!"
"Why not?" Mr. Heron asked, stimulated to a little curiosity.
"Paris is a beauty, you know, a little on the wane, and wanting to be elaborately made up and curled and powdered and painted, and all that. She's a little of a slattern underneath the surface, you know, and doesn't bear to be taken unawares—mustn't be seen for at least an hour or two after she has got out of bed. All the more like Balzac's women."
Perhaps the elder man had observed Mr. Heron's sensitiveness more closely and clearly than Heron fancied, and was talking on only to give him time to recover his composure. Certainly he talked much more volubly and continuously than appeared at first to be his way. After a while he said, in his usual style of blunt but not unkind inquiry—
"Any of your people living in London?"
"No—in fact, I haven't any people in England—few relations now left anywhere."
"Like Melchisedek, eh? Well, I don't know that he was the most to be pitied of men. You have friends enough, I suppose?"
"Not friends exactly—acquaintances enough, I dare say—people to call on, people who remember one's name and who ask one to dinner. But I don't know that I shall have much time for cultivating acquaintanceships in the way of society."
"Why so? What are you going to London to do?"
"To get a hearing, of course. To make the whole thing known. To show that I was in the right, and that I only did what the honor of England demanded. I trust to England."
"What's England got to do with it? England is only so many men and women and children all concerned in their own affairs, and not caring twopence about you and me and our wrongs. Besides, who has accused you? Who has found fault with you? Your time is out, and there's an end."
"But they have dropped me down—they think to crush me."
"If they do, it will be by severely letting you alone; and what can you do against that? You can't quarrel with a man merely because he ceases to invite you to dinner, and that's about the way of it."
"I'll fight this out for all that."
"You'll soon get tired of it. It's beating the air, you know. Of course, if you want to annoy the Government, you could easily get some of us to take up your case—no difficulty about that—and make you the hero of a grievance and a debate, and so on."
"I want nothing of the kind! I don't want any one to trouble himself about me, and I don't care to be taken in hand by any one. If Englishmen will not listen to a plain statement of right, why then——But I know they will."
The conviction itself was expressed in the tone of one who by its very assertion protests against a rising doubt and tries to stifle it.
"Very good," said the other. "Try it on. We shall soon see. I have a sort of interest in the matter, for I had a grievance myself, and I have still, only I went about things in a different way—looking for redress, I mean."
"What did you do?"
"It's a longish story, and quite a different line from yours, and it would bore you to hear, even if you understood it. I got into the House and made myself a nuisance. I put money in my purse; it came in somehow. I watch the department that I once belonged to with the eye of a lynx. Well, I shall look out for you and give you a hand if I can, always supposing it would annoy the Government—any Government—I don't care what."
Mr. Heron looked at him with wonder and incredulity.
"Terrible lack of principle, you think? Not a bit of it; I'm a strong politician; I stick to my side through thick and thin. But in their management of departments, you know—contracts, and all that—governments areall the same; the natural enemies of man. Well, I hope to see you. I am going to have a sleep. Let me give you my address—though in any case I think we are certain to meet."
They parted with blunt expression of friendly inclination on the one side and a doubtful, half-reluctant acknowledgment on the other. Heron remained standing in his balcony looking at the changes of the moonlight on the silent streets and thinking of his career and his grievance.
The nearer he came to England the colder his hopes seemed to grow. Now upon the threshold of the country he had so longed to reach, he was inclined to linger and loiter and to put off his entrance. Everything that was so easy and clear a few thousand miles off began to show itself perplexed and difficult. "When shall I be there?" he used to ask himself on his homeward journey. "What have I come for?" he began to ask himself now.
Times had indeed changed very suddenly with Victor Heron. He had come into the active world perhaps rather prematurely. When very young, under the guidance of an energetic and able father who had been an administrator of some distinction in England's service among her dependencies, he had made himself somewhat conspicuous in one of the colonies; and when an opportunity occurred, after his father's death, of offering him a considerable position, the Government appointed him to the administration of a new settlement. It is hardly necessary for us to go any deeper into the story of his grievance than he has already gone himself in a few words. Except as an illustration of his character, we have not much to do with the story of his career as an administrator. It was a very small business altogether; a quarrel in a far off, lately appropriated, and almost wholly insignificant scrap of England's domains. Probably Mr. Heron was in the wrong, for he had been stimulated wholly by a chivalrous enthusiasm for the honor of England's principles and a keen sense of what he considered justice. The Government had dealt very kindly with him in consideration of his youth and of his father's services, and had merely dropped him down.
This to a young man like Heron was simply killing with kindness. He could have stood up stoutly against impeachment, trial, punishment, any manner of exciting ordeal, and commanded his brave heart to bear it. But to be quietly allowed to go his way was intolerable, and, being accused of nothing, he was rushing back to England to insist on being accused of something. A chief of any kind in a small dependency is a person of overwhelming greatness and importance in his own sphere. Every eye there is literally on him. He diffuses even a sort of impression as if he were a good deal too large for his sphere, like the helmet of such portentous size in the courtyard of Otranto. To come down all at once to be an ordinary passenger to England, an ordinary "No. 257, au 3me" at the Hôtel du Louvre in Paris, an obscure personage getting out at the Charing Cross station and calling a hansom, nobody caring whence he has come, or capable, even after elaborate reminder, of calling to memory his story, his grievance, or his identity—this is something to try the soul of a patient man. Mr. Heron was not patient.
He was a young Quixote out of time and place. He never could let anything alone. He could not see a grievance without trying to set it right. The impression that anybody was being wronged or cheated affected and tormented him as keenly as a discordant note or an inharmonious arrangement of colors might disturb persons of loftier artistic soul. In the colonies queer old ideas survive long after they have died out of England, and the traveller from the parent country comes often on some ancient abstraction there as he might upon some old-fashioned garment. Heron started into life with a full faith in the living reality of divers abstractionswhich people in England have long since dissected, analyzed, and thrown away. He believed in and spoke of progress, and humanity, and brotherhood, and such like vaguenesses as if they were real things to work for and love. People who regard abstractions as realities are just the very persons who turn solid and commonplace realities into shining and splendid abstractions. Young Heron regarded England not as an island with a bad climate, where some millions of florid men made money or worked for it, but as a sort of divine influence inspiring youth to noble deeds and patriotic devotion. He was of course the very man to get into a muddle when he had anything to do with the administration of a new settlement. If the muddle had not lain in his way, he would assuredly have found it.
He had so much to do now on his further way home in helping elderly ladies on that side who could not speak French, and on this side who could not speak English; in seeing that persons whom he had never set eyes on before were not neglected at buffets, left behind by trains, or overcharged by waiters; in giving and asking information about everything, that he had not much time to think about the St. Xavier's settlements and his personal grievance. When the suburbs of London came in sight, with their trim rows of stucco-fronted villas and cottages, and their front gardens ornamented with the inevitable evergreens, a thrill of enthusiasm came up in Heron's breast, and he became feverish with anxiety to be in the heart of the great capital once again. Now he began to see familiar spires, and domes, and towers, and then again huge, unfamiliar roofs and buildings that were not there when he was in London last, and that puzzled him with their presence. Then the train crossed the river, and he had glimpses of the Thames, and Westminster Palace, and the embankment with its bright garden patches and its little trees, and he wondered at the ungenial creatures who see in London nothing but ugliness. To him everything looked smiling, beautiful, alive with hope and good omen.
Certainly a railway station, an arrival, a hurried transaction, however slight and formal, with a customs officer, are a damper on enthusiasm of any kind. Heron began to feel dispirited. London looked hard and prosaic. His grievance began to show signs of breaking out again amid the hustling, the crowd, the luggage, and the exertion, as an old wound might under similar circumstances, if one in his haste and eagerness were to strain its hardly closed edges.
It was when he was in a hansom driving to his hotel that Heron, putting his hand in his waistcoat pocket, drew out a crumpled card which he had thrust in there hastily and forgotten. The card bore the name of
"Mr. Crowder E. Money,Victoria street,Westminster."
"Mr. Crowder E. Money,Victoria street,Westminster."
Heron remembered his friend of Paris. "An odd name," he thought. "I have heard it before somewhere. I like him. He seems a manly sort of fellow."
Then he found himself wondering what Mr. Money's daughters were like, and wishing he had observed them more closely in Paris, and asking whether it was possible that girls could be pretty and interesting with such an odd name.
"Of making many books there is no end," sighed a preacher in times when industrious readers might presumably have kept the run of current literature. Our advantage over Solomon is the utter hopelessness of reading the new works, not to speak of standard acres in the libraries. In this holiday season, chief hatching-time of books, it is pleasant to see them flocking out in numbers so vast. "Germany published 11,315 works of all classes in 1873, 12,070 in 1874, 12,516 in 1875." We rub our hands over statistics like these, because they check any mad ambition to master German contemporary literature; and besides, there are "1,622 newspapers and periodical publications in the German empire." As for the new works in our own tongue, the only way of getting through them would obviously be to do as legislators do with the laws they pass—"read them by title."
Earlier ages, that had not reached this happy hopelessness, produced great bookworms. When the old monks had devoured their convent libraries, they were fain to pay vast sums occasionally for extra reading, as St. Jerome did for the works of Origen; whereas now a reviewer can only glance at his "complimentary copies" of new books, so numerous are they. Bacon argued against abridgements, as if the body of literature could be compassed in his day. A century or two ago there were prodigious Porsons and Johnsons; but such gluttons are now rare. It is true that Mill, between his fourth and eighth years, read in the original all Herodotus and a good part of Xenophon, Lucian, Isocrates, Diogenes Laertius, Plato, and the Annual Register, besides Hume, Gibbon, Robertson, Miller, Mosheim, and other historians; while before the age of thirteen he had mastered the whole of Homer, Virgil, Horace, Sallust, Thucydides, Aristotle's Rhetoric and Logic, Tacitus, Juvenal, Quinctilian, parts of Ovid, Terence, Nepos, Cæsar, Livy, Lucretius, Cicero, Polybius, and many other authors, besides learning geometry, algebra, and the differential calculus. But that lad was crammed scientifically like a Strasbourg goose; our ordinary modern writers are not walking cyclopædias, and are rarely prodigious readers. It is no longer a reproach even for a man not to know all the literature of his specialty; while, as for general reading, when the "Publisher's Circular" tells us that the different books that mankind have made are numbered by millions, we sit down in a most comfortable despair, and pick to our liking.
Thanks to modern fecundity, critics rarely molest authors with demands for theraison d'êtreof a new book. The reviewer's question used to be, "Why did the man publish? What need was there? What is he trying to show?" One pontiff is said to have suggested burning up all the different books in the world, except six thousand, so that the rest might be read. There used to be pleas for condensations, as if people were still fondly hoping to compass the realm of literature and science, the blessed era of hopelessness having not yet dawned. But it is idle to plead against diffuseness now, when writers are paid by the page or line. "I want," said the editor of "La Situation" to Dumas, "a story from you, entitled 'Terreur Prussienne à Francfort'—60feuilletonsof 400 lines each; total, 84,000 lines." "And if it makes only 58?" responded Dumas. "I require 60, of 400 lines each, averaging 31 letters each line—744,000 letters." At noon of the day agreed upon, the manuscript was in the hands of M. Hollander. If Sir Critic ever came with foot-rule and condensing-pump to gravely detect diffusiveness in the "Terreur Prussienne," it must have diverted the high contracting parties.
It is said that a dialogue of Dumas the elder created a revolution in the French mode of paying romance literature. Dumas, who was reckoned by the line, one day introduced, they say, into hisfeuilletonthis thrilling passage:
My son!My mother!Listen!Speak!Seest thou?What?This poniard!It is stained—With blood!Whose?Thy father's.Ah!!!
My son!My mother!Listen!Speak!Seest thou?What?This poniard!It is stained—With blood!Whose?Thy father's.Ah!!!
After that Dumas was paid by the letter. To say sooth, the same incident, with a different catastrophe, is related of Ponson Du Terrail, who, one day, in his "Resurrection de Rocambole," filled about a column with dialogue of this character:
Who?I.You?Yes.He shuddered.
Who?I.You?Yes.He shuddered.
Accordingly, as the story goes, the author being summoned before the editor of the "Petit Journal," was notified that if this monosyllabic chat went on, he would be paid by the word. "Very well," replied the obliging novelist, "I will change my style;" and next day, M. Millaud was astounded to find thefeuilletonintroducing a pair of stammerers talking in this agreeable fashion:
"Wou-wou-would you de-de-de-deceive me, you wr-wr-wretch?" said the old corsair in a tone of thunder."I ne-ne-ne-never de-de-de-deceived an-an-an-anybody," exclaimed Baccarat, imitating the other's defect in pronunciation."Wh-wh-wh-where is Ro-ro-rocam-bo-bole?""You ne-ne-never will kn-know."
"Wou-wou-would you de-de-de-deceive me, you wr-wr-wretch?" said the old corsair in a tone of thunder.
"I ne-ne-ne-never de-de-de-deceived an-an-an-anybody," exclaimed Baccarat, imitating the other's defect in pronunciation.
"Wh-wh-wh-where is Ro-ro-rocam-bo-bole?"
"You ne-ne-never will kn-know."
"He will make all his characters stutter soon," said Millaud. "We had better pay him by the line." Of course this is a storyfaite à plaisir, as is also the one that as soon as Dumas made his first contract by the line, enchanted with the arrangement, he invented dear old Grimaud, who only opened his mouth to utter "yes," "no," "what?" "ah!" "bah!" and other monosyllables; but when the editor, who knew the cash price of "peuh" and "oh," declared he would only pay for lines half full, Grimaud was slaughtered the next morning. However, these yarns show that the French can satirize their jerky, staccato style offeuilleton, with each sentence staked off in a paragraph by itself, like some grimacing clown, who expects each particular joke or handspring to be observed individually, and to be greeted with separate applause. Across the channel we of course find the English journals going to the other extreme, in insular pride, and packing distinct subjects into the same paragraph.
Greek and Roman Tuppers used, no doubt, to "reel off a couple of hundred lines, standing on one foot;" but the veneering of a thin layer of ideas upon a thick layer of words is naturally the special trait of our age of cheap ink and paper, of steam printing, and of paying for writing by long measure. The "Country Parson" is a favorite writer of this sort, whose excellence is in "the art of putting things," rather than in having many things to put. The essays of the "Spectator," "Guardian," "Tatler," "Rambler," rarely gave only a pennyworth of wit to an intolerable deal of words; but our modern periodical essay achieves success by taking some such assertion as "Old maids are agreeable," or "Old maids are disagreeable," and wire-drawing it into sundry yards of readable matter. Macbeth's
The Devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac'd loon!Where got'st thou that goose-look?
The Devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac'd loon!Where got'st thou that goose-look?
would supply a modern playwright with a square foot of gold-beaten invective. "True poems," said Irving, "are caskets which enclose in a small compass the wealth of the language—its family jewels." But when poems are paid by the line, bards are pardonable for diffuseness. And then, besides diffuseness, our age has wonderful literary fecundity. Few people know how much painters paint, and how much great writers write; for the bards of a single poem, as Mr. Stedman shows, are exceptional, and rich quantity as well as rich quality is the usual rule for greatness, whether of novelist, poet, essayist, metaphysician, or historian. So here we come upon another source of the accumulated floods of literature. The other day I was looking through a prodigious list of the works of Alexandre Dumas,père. There were 127 of them, mostly novels—"Monte Christo," "Three Musketeers," "Bragelonne," and the rest that we used to read. They made 244 volumes; but the plays were not included, and many slighter miscellanies did not seem to be there; and the posthumous work on cookery was certainly not there; and of course there was no effort to collect everything from "Le Mois,""La Liberté," and the half dozen other journals he edited or wrote in; so that I doubt not the writings of this illustrious man, if ever brought together in a complete edition, would make at least 150 works of 300 or 400 stout volumes. And in English literature we have many Salas and Southworths. I remember an announcement in the "Lancet" that "Mr. G. A. Sala is completely restored to health, and in the full discharge of his professional duties." An expressive term, that "full discharge"!
Again, some popular authors employ apprentices to do the bulk of their work, only touching it up with mannerisms, and so turn out much more than if they wrought it all. The world, too, has now accumulated a myriad handbooks of facts and compilations of statistics, which enable writers with a fondness for theory, like Buckle, to have all their material ready to spin into generalization. Then there is a popular education toward prolixity in the telegraphic part of newspapers. The associated press writers from Washington seem to be selected for their inability to be terse and pithy, and dribble out the simplest fact with pitiful iteration. The special news-writers, being often at their wits' end for their dole of day's work, can hardly be asked to be laconic. The special messages which the ocean wires bring, doubtless with exquisite terseness and picturesqueness, are most carefully interwritten and diluted; so that, for example, the words "Thiers spoke at Coulmiers" become "M. Adolphe Thiers, president of the French Republic before the accession of the present Chief Executive, Marshal MacMahon, delivered an address, or rather made some remarks partly in the nature of an oration or speech on subjects connected with matters of interest at the present time, at the town of Coulmiers, which is situated"—and here follow a dozen lines from the Cyclopædia, but dated at Paris, giving the geography, history, and commerce of Coulmiers. One can fancy in the "Atlantic cable" columns of the "Morning Meteor" the tokens of a standing prescription to dilute foreign facts with nine parts domestic verbiage; and this kind of "editing" educates mankind to padding and patching with superfluous material.
It is harder for French writers to be prolix. The French writer is inevitably epigrammatic first, and, if diffusive afterward, it is with malice aforethought. If we compare, for example, publicists like Guizot and Gladstone, while each has that perfect command of his material, instead of letting the material command him, which marks the skilful writer, yet the Englishman sometimes seems to require two or three consecutive sentences to bring out his thought, whereas M. Guizot packs it into one. But Guizot deliberately goes on to put the identical statement into two or three paraphrased forms. For example, in the "History of Civilization in Europe" there is usually a terse sentence or two in each paragraph which contain the whole of it, packed into briefest compass; were these key sentences repeated on the side of the page as marginal notes, the reader could master the book by mastering the margins. When an English writer is diffuse, he cannot help it; when a French writer is diffuse, he effects it by sheer effort at repetition.
And we humble hack scribblers, who confidingly slip our daily, and weekly, and monthly mites into the vast mass of current reading turned out for an omnivorous public—let us hope that the world's maw may long remain unsated and the market unglutted.
While to many it has seemed a pity that the Johnston gallery should be broken up, yet this distribution of its treasures scatters the seeds of art education. Besides, the prices obtained at the sale must impress many wealthy men with a conviction valuable to the interests of art; namely, that pictures, like diamonds, are a safe investment, as well as a source of enjoyment and fame. Considering that the times are hard, and that pictures are luxuries, the sum thus paid for art treasures, so soon after the centennial purchases, is a proof of the number of good patrons that can be counted on when works of value are for sale. But the works must be of value. At a former auction in New York "old masters" brought these prices: Madonna Del Correggio, $30; two Murrillos, $160 and $90; a landscape of Salvator Rosa, $55; a Tintoretto, $115; a Guido, $35; "St. John," by Sir Joshua Reynolds, $15—and so on.Every few months we find a so-called Titian or Raphael going for the price of the frame. Such auctions tell a story as emphatic as that of the Johnston gallery.
When the German painters were considering whether they should send canvases to the Centennial Exposition the "Allgemeine Zeitung" reminded them "that their works bring twice as much in America as in Germany." But each successive sale here shows that most buyers now know what is worth getting and what is not, though naturally some painters are the rage who will be forgotten fifty years hence. Still, the cynics are wrong in decrying the eagerness to buy painters who are in fashion. What harm in a millionaire's ordering a pictured'ameublement, to suit a particular room or panel, or in his ordering from the bookseller a hundred volumes of current novels? If the picture be good, whether bought by the foot for furnishing or whether painted under the microscope, its sale may aid the profession of art.
Comparing the Johnston sale with some of the famous auctions of the past four years at the hotel Drouot, we find that in the Paturle collection twenty-eight canvases bought $90,000, being all works of masters. The general prices were not higher than the Johnston prices, but Ary Scheffer's Marguerites brought 40,000 and 35,000 francs; a Troyon, 63,000; and Leopold Robert's admirable "Fishers of the Adriatic," 83,000 francs. The gallery of the Pereires brought 1,785,586 francs, which was rather higher than the Johnston total, but I believe there were more masterpieces. A head by Greuze brought 32,500 francs. The highest prices seemed to be carried off by the Dutch painters, who were in force, and three works by Hobbema, a country residence, a forest scene, and a windmill, brought respectively 50,000, 81,000, and 30,000 francs.
The prices for good pictures, taking into account agreeableness of subject and state of preservation, seem to be much the same in New York and Paris, though French newspapers fancy American taste for art to be at barbarian pitch. They should learn otherwise from the American painting and sculpture in Paris, London, Vienna, Florence, and Rome; they might learn otherwise from the discriminating appreciation of their own artists at such sales as Mr. Johnston's. The worst statuary as well as by far the best at Philadelphia last year was Italian, and some of the worst painting as well as the best was Spanish. There is some monstrous governmental art, no doubt, with us, but as for popular taste, there is nothing in America so vulgar as the cheap glass necklaces, tin spangles, and painted trinkets on the sacred images in the churches of Southern Europe. American travellers speak of the contrast between the beautiful cathedral and its hideous painted images bedizened with trash to which dollar-store jewels are gems of art; and the approaches to a splendid church or castle are very likely bedecked with clumsy, unvolatile angels, most terrestrial and unlovely. It is true that the decoration of temples and the adoration of images, whether under heathen or Christian auspices, has always fostered art; but American popular taste, low as it is supposed to be, would hardly set up in churches statues of painted wood only fit for tobacco shops. In Rome, where American taste is looked down upon, they have annual shows of painted wooden figures of saints and angels, in all hues, each uglier than the other, to be sold for putting upon the altars as votive offerings. In fact, wherever the "Latin race" is, the popular taste runs to blocks of the Virgin and Child resembling the lay figures in a tailor's shop.
The leading thought on this subject is that art has made greater strides in the United States within the past twenty years than for the century preceding. Twenty years ago there was comparatively no art public at all. There were not a quarter part as many foreign pictures here as to-day; there were not a fourth part as many American artists. The department of American water colors has been substantially created within ten years. The facilities for art education have been quadrupled within the same period, and the wealthy who form galleries have multiplied in like proportion. American progress in science and mechanism, though so great, falls short of American progress in taste and American productivity in the fine arts.
Philip Quilibet.
Prof. Clerk Maxwell says that the ordinary lightning rod is a great mistake. It acts to discharge electricity from the clouds at all possible opportunities, but these discharges are smaller than would occur without the rod. The true method is to encase the building in a network of rods, when it will take its charge quietly like a Leyden jar. Taking the case of a powder mill, it would be sufficient to surround it with a conducting material, to sheathe its roof, walls, and ground-floor with thick sheet copper, and then no electrical effect could occur within it on account of any thunderstorm outside. There would be no need of any earth connection. We might even place a layer of asphalte between the copper floor and the ground, so as to insulate the building. If the mill were then struck with lightning, it would remain charged for some time, and a person standing on the ground outside and touching the wall might receive a shock, but no electrical effect would be perceived inside, even on the most delicate electrometer.
This sheathing with sheet copper is not necessary. It is quite sufficient to enclose the building with a network of a good conducting substance. For instance, if a copper wire, say No. 4, B. W. G. (0.238 inches diameter), were carried round the foundation of the house, up each of the corners and gables, and along the ridges, this would probably be a sufficient protection for an ordinary building against any thunderstorm in this climate. The copper wire may be built into the wall to prevent theft, but should be connected to any outside metal, such as lead or zinc on the roof, and to metal rain-water pipes. In the case of a powder-mill it might be advisable to make the network closer by carrying one or two additional wires over the roof and down the walls to the wires at the foundations. If there are water or gas pipes which enter the building from without, these must be connected with the system of conducting wires; but if there are no such metallic connections with distant points, it is not necessary to take any pains to facilitate the escape of the electricity into the earth. But it is not advisable to put up a tail pointed conductor.
Mr. Barnaby, a prominent English naval constructor, has written a memorandum on the British mercantile marine as an adjunct to the navy in time of war. He points out that privateering has been made obsolete, not merely by popular feeling, but also by the progress of the arts. A privateer, he thinks, must be prepared to meet regular ships of war of about the same strength. This the introduction of steam machinery has made impossible. War ships are built for security, merchant steamers for economical work, and the different objects have necessitated different arrangements. In a word, the machinery of war ships is carefully disposed below the water line, that of marine vessels is usually above the water line. The latter would therefore be much more subject to injury from shot than the other. This state of things excludes from service as privateers all but the swiftest vessels, and Mr. Barnaby thinks that the use of the merchant marine "would be confined to ships that could save themselves by their speed if they met a ship of war, whether armored or not," and that only those which can steam eleven and a half or twelve knots an hour can be considered serviceable for privateering. This limits the number of vessels available for this service to 400 or 500, and the common idea that England can, in case of war, "cover the sea" with her ships is proved to be untrue. Even these vessels could not be used as privateers except against certain nations. The Government would be compelled to buy them, and this would cost, he estimates, a hundred to a hundred and fifty million dollars. This addition to the regular fleet he thinks would enable England to "close up every hostile port, and the slow steamers and the helpless sailing ships might cross theseas in such security (privateering not being admissible) that merchandise would be as safe in the English ship as in the neutral." The fault in all this reasoning is that a ship of inferior speed is certain to meet with a swifter antagonist, and therefore become a capture. Our experience with the Confederate cruisers was that the efforts of a very large navy may be eluded and defied for years, without regard to the sailing qualities on either side.
The influence upon animals of their association with man formed the subject of an interesting discussion in the British Association meeting. Mr. Shaw read a paper "On the Mental Progress of Animals During the Human Period," and Dr. Grierson mentioned an instance of intelligence which had come under his own notice. Five years ago a barrel was put up in his garden at the top of a high pole. The barrel was perforated with holes and divided in the centre. In the course of two days two starlings visited the barrel, and returned on the following day, and in about a week afterward two pairs of starlings came and occupied it, and brought up their young. They were very wild starlings, and readily took flight when any person went near the barrel. In the second year four pairs of starlings occupied the barrel, and they were much tamer than the previous ones, and this last year there were a number of pairs of starlings so tame that they would almost allow him to take hold of them. They had now changed their mode of speaking, for the starlings in his garden frequently articulated words.
Whales have rudimentary limbs, and Prof. Struthers concludes that such muscles existed in the whale-bone whales, but in ordinary teethed whales they were merely represented by fibrous tissue. These muscles existing in the true bottle-nosed whale had a special interest, as the teeth in that whale were rudimentary and functionless. He had found these muscles in the forearms of whales largely mixed with fibrous tissue, so the transition was easy. Prof. MacAlister of Dublin thinks that whales were not of very ancient origin, for the existence of the rudimentary limbs tends to show that a sufficient length of time has not elapsed since the use of the limb was essential to the earlier animal to produce its complete obliteration.
The advance which this country has made in educational facilities of all grades within its hundred years of life was summarized as follows by Prof. Phelps, President of the National Educational Association:
"Prior to 1776 but nine colleges had been established, and not more than five were really efficient. Now there are more than 400 colleges and universities, with nearly 57,000 students, and 3,700 professors and teachers. Then little was done for the higher education of women. Now there are 209 female seminaries, 23,445 students, and 2,285 teachers. There are also 322 professional schools of various classes, excluding 23,280 students and 2,490 instructors. Then normal schools had no existence. Now there are 124, with 24,405 students and 966 instructors. There were then no commercial colleges. Now 127 are in operation, with 25,892 students and 577 teachers. Then secondary and preparatory schools had scarcely a name by which to live. Now 1,122 are said to exist, affording instruction to 100,593 pupils, and giving employment to 6,163 teachers. The kindergarten is a very recent importation. In 1874 we were blessed with 55 of these human nurseries, with 1,636 pupils and 125 teachers. Now 37 States and 11 Territories report an aggregate of more than 13,000,000 school population, or more than four times the total population of the country in 1776. Then the school enrollment was of course unknown. Now it amounts to the respectable figure of about 8,500,000. Then the schools were scattered and their number correspondingly restricted. Now they are estimated at 150,000, employing 250,000 teachers. The total income of the public schools is given at $82,000,000, their expenditures at $75,000,000, and the value of their property at $165,000,000. The number of illiterates by the census of 1870 above the age of ten years, in round numbers, was 5,500,000. Of these more than 2,000,000 were adults, upward of 2,000,000 more were from fifteen totwenty-one years of age, and 1,000,000 were between ten and fifteen years. Of the number between fifteen and twenty-one years it is estimated that about one-half have passed the opportunity for education."
Mr. James Croll, in a letter to "Nature" (July 13, 1876), incidentally mentions the lessons that may be derived from the configurations of the earth's surface.